Presidents of France 1: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III

Louis Napoleon was born in 1808, the son of Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte.  This younger brother married the daughter from the first marriage of Josephine, the barren wife of Napoleon I. Louis Bonaparte was set up as the King of Holland by Napoleon.  

After the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty he and his family had to flee to Switzerland and live in exile.  The Napoleons then moved to Rome in 1823 where the sons got involved in the radical group, the Carbonari who opposed the domination of Northern Italy by the Austrians.  In 1831 they got in trouble with the police who were moving to suppress the Carbonari and fled back to France where Louis Phillipe I had just replaced the old regime the previous year in what was called the July Revolution.  When Louis XVIII died in 1824 his younger brother, Charles X became king.  

Charles X took his royal prerogative too far, which was the beginning of the problem for him. Charles proposed perpetual forced labor for anyone profaning the containers of the consecrated host, and Charles X made it a capital crime anyone profaning the host itself.   In addition Charles proposed that those who had lost property or been declared "enemies of the people" during the first republic be indemnified.  

Delacroix's portrayal of the 1830 revolution

This made Charles X about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool and in three days in July 1830 he was overthrown and a new monarch replaced him, the much more liberal-minded Louis Phillipe.

Louis Phillipe

  Charles X abdicated and went into exile in Britain.

It was to this situation that the young Louis Napoleon with his family returned to France.  Being a Bonaparte, he wasn't exactly welcome, but they quietly returned to Paris under the name "Hamilton".  However their presence became known and following Bonapartist demonstrations they were politely asked to leave, which they did.  They went into exile, first in Britain and then to Switzerland.  

In 1836 he attempted to provoke a coup d'etat against Louis Phillipe from Strasbourg, but failed and fled to Switzerland.  Louis Phillipe was not amused and put pressure on the Swiss to give him up, but the Swiss when faced with French troops at their border, bade Louis Napoleon farewell and he went elsewhere.  From London he went to Brazil and then to New York.  His mother was taken ill while he was traveling in the US, and he rushed back to Switzerland to be at her side when she died.  She was buried in France at Reuil, but they would not allow him to re-enter France.  

He inherited his mother's fortune on her death and lived comfortably in London, but yet France was calling him, and he attempted another coup, this time launched from Boulogne.  Again this was a fiasco, one of his party was killed, and everyone else arrested.  The customs officials did not, as expected, join the rebellion.  Louis Napoleon was not so lucky this time, and was imprisoned for life.  Even then, it wasn't exactly hard time.  He had an apartment there in the prison, received celebrated visitors, had a large library, and even a mistress from a nearby town who bore him two of his children.  

Like many political prisoners, he found time to read and even to write books developing his thoughts on social issues and government.  He wrote a book while there, which was published in 1844, L'extinction du pauperism.  In 1846, with the assistance of friends on the outside, he escaped the prison posing as a laborer named "Badinguet" and made it back to England.  After his father died shortly after, he became the heir to the Bonaparte dynasty.  

During the 1848 revolution, on the same day that Louis Phillippe was leaving France for England, Louis Napoleon was leaving England for France.  When he offered his services to the provisional government set up in the wake of Louis Phillipe's departure, Alphonse de Lamartine told him to please go away.  So he returned to London and waited.  

A second outbreak of unrest occurred in June, when the left set up barricades in working class neighborhoods and street fighting.  They were brutally suppressed with up to five thousand dead and fifteen thousand arrested.  

New elections were held for the National Assembly.  He ran in 13 departments and won in five of them.  Meanwhile the government crafted a new constitution and set elections for president of the Second Republic.  Election was through popular vote, not as before by selection by the national assembly.  

He campaigned against four other candidates of various political persuasions.  Louis Napoleon chose to take a centrist approach, supporting religion, family and property, but also proposed some government intervention to look after the old age of workers and their general welfare. 

He was elected President in December 1848 and charted a centrist course.  He sent troops to uphold the authority of the pope in Italy, which pleased Catholics and infuriated the Republicans.  In the elections held a couple of months later, the conservatives prevailed and thus were able to block initiatives coming from the President.  In June 1849 the leftists attempted to seize power, which Louis Napoleon suppressed thoroughly. The conservatives dominating the assembly took the opportunity to disenfranchise opponents to their rule by restricting universal male suffrage.    Louis Napoleon then chose to campaign against the "Party of Order" as the conservatives called themselves.    

As president of the republic he was constitutionally barred from running again, and although he got a majority to amend the constitution so that he could run for a second term it was short of a 2/3 majority.   Thus frustrated Louis-Napoleon decided to stage a coup d'etat.  On December 1-2, 1851 with the backing of key officers of the French army, Napoleon's forces occupy the national printing office, the Palais Bourbon, newspaper offices, and other key points.   Certain members of the National Assembly were arrested in their homes, and proclamations were posted around the city of Paris declaring universal suffrage and new elections.  Victor Hugo, tried to organize opposition but it was quickly overcome with hundreds of deaths among the opponents and Hugo went into exile, living in the channel islands for the durations of Napoleon III's rule.

Napoleon III ran a repressive regime for several years against his political opponents, imprisoning about 6000 of them and sending others to penal colonies in French Guiana or Algeria.   After a few years he relaxed his control and allowed more political freedom.  

Napoleon III is perhaps best remembered for his renovation of Paris and other major cities.  With the

guidance of Baron Haussman, the prefect of the Seine, he demolished large swathes of medieval Paris and laid out broad new avenues, city parks, and a modernized sewer system.  His architects designed apartment buildings and public buildings in what became known as the French Second Empire style.     Other projects he pursued were the building of railroads, the building of the Suez canal, the founding of agricultural schools, and established free trade with England and other trading partners in Europe.  The new broad avenues served another purpose later on, when the Paris Commune of 1871 was suppressed relatively easily because the new avenues provided a route for troops to sweep in and take control of the city.

He expanded the French Empire, acquiring New Caledonia, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Senegal.  In Foreign policy he was aligned with Britain, fighting along with them in the Crimean War against Russia. 

Manet's take on this historic event

While he was supportive of Italian unification efforts, he defended the Papal States in central Italy from encroachment.  Other foreign adventures, however were less felicitous, such as his attempt to establish a monarchy in Mexico, which led to a bloody civil war and the execution of Maximilian I, the younger brother of the Austrian Emperor.  

Ultimately Napoleon III's downfall lay in the ambitions of Prussian Chancellor  Otto Von Bismarck to unify Germany.   Bismarck successfully manipulated the international situation  so as to trigger a war with France.  The Ems telegram, dealing with the question of whether a Hohlenzollern prince was to occupy the Spanish throne, was edited so as to make it insulting to the French, who took the bait.  The French declared war on July 19, 1870 and found themselves heavily overmatched by the Prussians and the German confederation.  In a few short months the German confederation were laying siege to Paris and in the disastrous battle of Sedan on September 1, 1870, Napoleon III and a large body of French troops were captured.  

This was the end of the Second Empire.  A provisional government was formed and fought on for several more months.  Reparation payments were imposed and the German army occupied a large portion of Northern France until they were paid.  

The third republic was declared, a new president chosen, and the Paris Commune of 1871 suppressed.  After the war and with a peace treaty signed, the Germans released Napoleon III, who with his queen went into exile in England once more.   In fragile health by this time he died in 1873.  He was buried in St. Michael's Abbey in Chislehurst in greater London.